Indran Amirthanayagam is a parolier, a "speaker of poems," who in addition to his prolific body of poetry, also maintains close connection with dance and music, and has recorded two albums with Haitian musicians. With his poems, he has, in his words, "laid offerings at the altar of the Muse" in Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English. The wide recognition of his work includes his winning of the Paterson Poetry Prize, for his book The Elephants of Reckoning(also from Hanging Loose); and the Guaymas, Mexico Juegos Florales ("Floral Games") award for his poem "Juarez." He has received grants and fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the US/Mexico Fund for Culture.

Born in Ceylon in 1960, a country that, as he says, "no longer exists" (it is now Sri Lanka) Amirthanayagam lives in Maryland, where he edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, co-directs the translators association DC-ALT, and produces Poetry at the Port, a monthly spoken word series. A.K. Ramanujan called Amirthanayagam's poems "a welcome addition to the poetry of migration."